


T.R.A.C.K.S. Alternate ending

by helpmeimstuckon



Series: FitzSimmons Drabbles [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:45:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2630702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helpmeimstuckon/pseuds/helpmeimstuckon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What if Jemma got shot instead of Skye in TRACKS?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	T.R.A.C.K.S. Alternate ending

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pulling apart my drabbles in to single chap fics in the same series. This was #4

“Fitz! Get down here!” Coulson’s voice rang through the villa and Fitz felt his heart stop. He hadn’t ever heard that tone from his C.O. But he could tell it was not good. “Shit, shit, shit,” streamed from his mouth as he sprinted down the stairs and towards the cellar. As he burst through the door his eyes shot to Ward standing over someone, a panicked look in his eyes. Fitz let himself follow the gaze fearing what he would see. His eyes stopped on Jemma, bleeding out in Coulson’s arms.  
“No. Jemma, no.” He fell to his knees next to the two of them pressing his hands to Jemma’s stomach instinctively. He heard May and Skye enter the room behind him, presumably having secured Quinn.  
“She’s been shot.” Coulson sounded panicked. Some part of Fitz’s brain that was operating at a normal pace cataloged it as the first time he had heard his boss truly scared.  
“Oh, god.” He tried to think what Simmons would do in his place, tried to remember what she told him about gunshot wounds but he was drawing a blank. “You- you have to- you-” He stammered. He took a shaky deep breath and thought. “You have to keep her upright.”  
Coulson looked at Fitz, panic welling. “I've got no pulse.”  
Fitz let out a whimper as he looked around the room. His eyes settled on a cylindrical tube big enough to be a casket, and searched his mind to figure out where he had seen it before. Something Jemma had talked about.  
“Come on, Fitz. This is beyond cool. They actually have built commercial grade hyperbaric chambers! One’s they can use in hospitals for blood loss victims, and people who need to have constant regulation!”  
“Ya, well, they day it helps me in the field or in the lab is the day I will be as exuberantly excited as you.”  
“Put her in there.” Fitz said locking on the chamber.  
“Do you even know what this thing is?” Ward voice rang out. Fitz knew Ward was just as panicked as he was, he knew that the older agent cared about Simmons like a sister, but Fitz didn’t have time for this.  
“It’s a Hyperbaric chamber and I bloody said put her in there!” Fitz’s voice roared as he pushed himself up. Lifting Simmons as a whole they crossed the room in seconds laying her in the tube.  
“Skye, seal the chamber.” Fitz commanded steeping around to the panel on the side of the chamber. “I need to get her temperature down.” His fingers flew across the panel, his heart falling when he realized his partner’s blood was staining the controls. Shaking, he adjusted the conditions of the tube.  
Skye came to stand next to him. She voiced his actions to the rest of the team. “Temperature’s dropping, pressure’s stabilizing.”  
“Is it working?” May’s voiced was the one of someone who couldn’t lose a team member, not again. The team silenced all but breathing staring through the glass at the fallen agent.  
“Is it working?!” Coulson repeated May’s words, and Fitz could hear the guilt about the situation building. Why does Coulson feel any guilt? This was all on him. He was the one who let her go in. He let his partner leave his sight, unarmed, into a hostile enemy’s house. He was the one who didn’t insist they stay together. This was his fault. His partner was dying. And it was his fault.  
The team watched as Simmons eyelids fluttered ever so slightly, and her lips parted, letting out a foggy, sputtering breath. Fitz should have felt relieved. They had time. They could save her but he only felt tenser. She was still dying -his fault- they only had a few hours to save her -his fault- and she was locked in a chamber alone, too far to even touch. His fault.  
“For now, it’s working for now,” he stammered.  
~~~~~~  
“Her core temperature is around 44 degrees Fahrenheit. If we don’t lift it to normal within a few hours she could sustain brain damage. We need to get her to a medical facility, fast. Until then I’ll read over her notes and protocol, and do everything in my power to keep her alive. I would appreciate if one of you would monitor her vitals for a moment while I go clean up. Excuse me.”  
He turned away from Simmons and the rest, towards the store room. All he could see was Simmons’ blood staining his hands. Her blood was still thick and warm, and it felt slick when he pressed his hands together. His partner’s blood coated his palms. He entered the store room and turned to the extra medical supplies. Rifling through drawers, ripping open packaging he started to break. A sob ripped through his body. He gulped the next one back as he started scrubbing his hands. Out damned spot, out, he thought. Turning against the wall he slid to the ground, a ripping noise breaking through from his chest.  
My fault, my fault, my fault, rang through his head like a skipping CD. I shouldn’t have let her go in. I shouldn’t have let her. She shouldn’t have even been on that train today. She should be safe in a lab somewhere. My fault, my fault, my fault…  
Hearing someone in the hall way outside, Fitz choked back his tears. He made an attempt to straighten up and seem like it was normal to be sitting on the ground scrubbing at his hands. A failed one by the look on agent May’s face.  
She crouched in front of him. Her eyes were steel and ice. “Get up. Your partner needs you.” Her eyebrows lifted as her words landed.  
Fitz fixed his gaze on her. “This is my fault, May. She’s dying. The only person who could save her, is her. And it’s entirely my fault.” His voice wasn’t breaking so much as broken and he had a feeling that if you looked at him with x-ray vision his lungs would be gone. It was simply that hard to even draw breath knowing he had been the cause of her pain.  
May’s eyes softened. “This is not your fault. This is on Quinn. And I promise you, he has it coming. Stop beating yourself up and go do what you can to help your partner.” Something in May’s eyes had shifted, as well as in her phrasing. It was like she was reciting the words from memory and just altering them to fit. Fitz realized the vernacular was off. May’s pacing was off from her normal, and her eyes had shifted up and to the side slightly like she was trying to recall more clearly. That’s when Fitz released May had lost a partner. Her words were what she had been told. Melinda May, The Cavalry, had believed she was at fault for getting her partner killed.  
“Point is,” May brought Fitz back to earth. “Nothing is accomplished when you are sitting in here. Go take care of your partner.” Learn from my mistakes hung unsaid in the air. May pushed herself up and went off to who knows where, leaving Fitz to think about Simmons, May’s words, blame, and the events of the day.  
Fitz sat for what felt like hours in brain capacity, but was only minutes. His thoughts were a blur but one thing was sure. When Simmons woke, he was gonna be right next to her.  
Several days later  
Fitz looked at his watch again. Then at Simmons, now in a hospital bed in a removable room on the lower levels of the bus. Then at her vitals, then at his watch. Again.  
“You do know watching the clock makes it run slower.” Wards voice had a smile to it but when Fitz looked at him he could see the concern in his eyes. “How is she?”  
“Vitals are holding, she has no obvious side effects, the GH-325 has substantially improved her condition, but if she doesn’t wake up soon there is a fair chance that in repairing her body something happened in her brain.” Fitz trained his eyes on her face. There was a tube down her throat to make sure she could still breathe, a precaution mostly, along with two IV’s in her arms pumping lost fluids and pain killers in to her system, and electrodes attached to her chest and head to monitor brain activity as well as hear and breathing rate. “If she doesn’t wake soon we will have to take her to Sheffield, let her parents, or whoever she gave final power, decide what to do. She’ll probably even be fine without the support but… She wouldn’t want to live as a vegetable.”  
Ward’s eyebrows furrowed. “I thought you had deciding power.”  
“What?”  
“I was looking through both of your files before I joined the team. You both have the other listed as deciding power. Didn’t you know that?”  
Fitz’s brow furrowed. “Ya, I mean no. I mean… I knew she was mine.” he looked back at Jemma “But I didn’t know I was her’s.” Leo felt like he had just taken over for Atlas.  
Ward could see the stress he’d inadvertently added to the situation. “She’ll be fine. She’ll wake up in a day or so and you’ll have saved her life.” Ward tried to cover his earlier blunder. “You saved her, Fitz. She’ll know that. Skye will make certain of that, I’m sure.”  
Fitz thought that over. He did, in a way, save her life. He had dived into the guest house to get the drug and refused to let anyone else administer it. But did that one act of heroism release him of the responsibility of causing her near-death-experience?  
“She’ll be fine Fitz. You did good.” Ward left the room after that. Leo put his hand in Jemma’s and rubbed circles in to the back of her hand with this thumb. Shit, Jemma, you could have told me that, he thought. Would have save a shit load of trouble.  
Leo thought about the implications of having life or death power on someone he cared so strongly for. He realized he could never do it. He would never be able to pull the plug on her if there was even the tiniest chance that she could recover. And even if there wasn’t, he still couldn’t do it. He could never kill his Jemma. Even indirectly.  
Skye joined his vigil for a few hours then left then returned normally with food or at least tea. Coulson stopped by every hour on the hour. Ward swooped in whenever to check on Simmons and give Fitz an update. May dropped at entirely random intervals. They were all welcome distractions but Fitz was still all focus on Jemma. They had taken the breathing tube out and had reduced her pain killer levels. She was holding strong. Leo felt that if he had put her in this position it was his job to stay with her. And about half way through the second day after getting the GH-325, Fitz realized he hadn’t slept in at least four days. Not since they got on the train. So, against his better judgment, he had Skye bring him a pillow and laid his head down on the side of Jemma’s bed. At some point in falling asleep, his hand intertwined with Jemma’s. When he woke several hours later, their finger were still wound together. Jemma’s thumb was brushing up and down his hand. His brain took a moment to process this. Then his head shot up. He looked up in to Jemma’s wide open eyes. He sputtered shock, happiness, and a little frustration that she hadn’t woken him. To anyone else it would have sounded like gibberish but Jemma just smiled.  
“So, I take you were my big damn hero then?” she croaked out.  
Leo felt something shift. Not my fault. And for the first time since seeing her blood soaked in that cellar, Leo smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> (still not sure about that ending.)  
> Big thanks to Pandalandalopalis for the prompt and for Beta-ing this. you rock doll!


End file.
